Oh, I see somebody bumped this. Well for quite awhile now, we haven't had any conflicts between TiVos. There's only two SPs that we both watch which sit on my TiVo, and I simply archive them to VHS when I'm done watching them, so I have scads of room on my unsubbed series 1.

I've told my wife that if she is struggling too much with space we could consider upgrading her 80 hour TiVo, but I don't think she wants to, because she thinks that if her 80 hour TiVo is full, she's got too much in her Now Playing. Well, it is mostly full still, and she's still constantly archiving to make room for her To Do List.

The latest is that she consolidated her clothes which used to be in two dressers and one bureau, and was able to free up one entire dresser drawers, and she's using it to store tapes. (The bookcases are all filled up with tapes already.)

She's admitted to me that she's addicted and wishes that she wasn't, but doesn't know how to break the addiction.

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Originally posted by timckelleyShe's admitted to me that she's addicted and wishes that she wasn't, but doesn't know how to break the addiction.

I would say the first, and easiest thing to try, is to "accidentally" delete some shows from her TiVo before she gets a chance to watch or archive them. She'll be pissed initially, but then she'll realize that the show is gone, there's nothing she can do about it, and she may actually find it liberating to have one fewer show to worry about.

Originally posted by devdogaz I would say the first, and easiest thing to try, is to "accidentally" delete some shows from her TiVo before she gets a chance to watch or archive them. She'll be pissed initially, but then she'll realize that the show is gone, there's nothing she can do about it, and she may actually find it liberating to have one fewer show to worry about.

Hmmm.... do you think I should run this idea by her first, or just surprise her with a lost show? I wonder how safe this is. I fear it may not be safe.

Correction to my last post: it's not 2 SPs, but 3SPs that we jointly own, residing on my TiVo.

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Have her take a look at www.flylady.net --- if she really wants to make a change, this is a GREAT site. Flylady has a fantastic way of making you see how harmful clutter is and hording is and gently reminds you that you need to really love yourself to be able to make the changes you need to in your life.

My wife is now complaining that the existence of her TiVo has a sort of beckening effect, sucking her into the room where she spends hours at a time attending to it, causing her to neglect her other duties. She has requested that I sell her TiVo to break her of the addiction.

I asked her what's to stop her from being drawn to my surviving TiVo. She said that that she'll know it's my TiVo and so will stay away from it. I thought that maybe she was making a rash decision after having a bad day, so I asked her the next day, and she's still standing by her desire to get rid of her TiVo.

I told her I'm having second thoughts about selling it, because having two standalone TiVos is handy for resolving conflicts. If she really wants to get rid of it, maybe I should take it for myself and become the owner of 2 TiVos while she owns zero. But she feels like she'd still get beckoned by it.

I suggested how about I remove the TV from the room that has her TiVo, and she admits that would accomplish the same thing, as she won't use her TiVo if there's no TV next to it. However, I could still use it because I have it hooked up to AVcast technology which makes it operable from a different room. (Of couse she could do this too, but doesn't know how.)

My question to you is: is it excessive for one person (me) to have a series 2 80 hour TiVo (subbed) and a series 1 194 hour TiVo (unsubbed)? It seems like a huge amount of space for me, and I'll never come close to using a large fraction of it, so it makes me think maybe I should sell one. Still, conflict resolution is nice, but on the other hand, I rarely have conflicts. But I won't say never, but there have been conflicts; it just doesn't happen often. Is that justification for hanging on to two TiVos?

(Note: last night I observed her in the act of being beckened to her TiVo, but it was after our son was asleep, so I don't see the big harm. But she told me that she also attended to it yesterday afternoon while my son was in school, and she had other housework that she really wanted to get done, but didn't.)

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Originally posted by timckelley My wife is now complaining that the existence of her TiVo has a sort of beckening effect, sucking her into the room where she spends hours at a time attending to it, causing her to neglect her other duties. She has requested that I sell her TiVo to break her of the addiction.

See JYoung's post, above. Unfortunately, you might have to send TiVo away ... could be akin to not keeping any alcohol in a household that has an alcoholic living in it. Your wife seems to display some traits of OCD and/or and addictive personality. But I'm no professional, so what do I know.

I think maybe this summer would be a perfect time for both of your TiVos to disappear. Whether you sell them or just hide them is up to you. Let her go 3 months without the ability to record and maybe it will break her of the habit. Then you can decide whether it's safe to bring the TiVo out.

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Before making both TiVos disappear, I think I should just make hers disappear and see if she actually tries to use mine. I can always make both disappear if need be, but I really hope that's not necessary.

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Maybe you could turn on the parental controls to keep her from messing with yours.

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Originally posted by timckelley Excellent suggestion. If she really wants to locked out of her TiVo so that she won't yield to temptation, parental controls would accomplish that. I'll see what she says about this.

Question: Are parental controls available on an unsubbed series one?

put parental controls on the Series 2
put the remote in a locked drawer or hide it , etc.. ask her to box up all the tapes and store them away some where. See if she can do that.

If she really hits bottom and tries to break the parental controls or get at your remote then she may willingly see she needs a professional that can help her to deal with her TV/TiVo compulsion.

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I've got some somewhat alarming news to report. All through this thread, I've been assuming my wife has about 100 VHS tapes in the house, because that's what I thought it looked like. Well, the other day, out of curiousity, I counted them.

Including all the tapes she's bought with movies already on them, plus the blank ones that she's offloaded TiVo onto (the latter is much greater than the former), she's got in excess of 540 VHS TAPES!!!

And the number is still growing.

Well, I'm just happy that her hobby isn't something more expensive.

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Either that... or she'll go into "high gear" trying to regain her #1 spot from "the competition"

Still, the that many tapes takes up a lot of room... plus effort, etc. Perhaps she really needs a "work at home" job to focus her efforts on!

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Originally posted by allan I wouldn't bet on that! Some people take their TV very seriously.

If she was taking T.V. that seriuosly then she would have watched the shows already.

Expanding the drive in the current unit will only tempererly solve the problem. Give it another couple of weeks and the problem will return.

I think the getting her own box makes the most sense. How much will it cost. Get a refurbed 40 hr unit and the lifetime subscriptsion and you are on your way. Of course when hers gets filled (Which it will) she might just come back to your unit!

540 tapes x what 6-8 hours each? (I don't even remember the last time I recorded something on a tape so the # of hours is a guess). Plus an 80 hour tivo.

The truth of the matter is that more than likely she'll never watch 80-95% of the tapes.

I suggest you implement a tough-love system. Take all of her tapes and lock them up where only you have the key. Stop any purchases of new tapes. Allow her to keep 10 tapes outside of wherever you have them locked up. If she wants to watch one of the other tapes, she has to trade you a tape to get one out of storage. Only let her trade one a day. If she doesn't have enough room to record/archive something, then it gets deleted.

Your wife isn't recording shows for archival reasons. She's recording them to feed her addiction. To make her feel like she's able to manage everything. But she needs to learn that it's impossible to manage everything and learn to focus on the most important things.

Originally posted by TivoFan I suggest you implement a tough-love system. Take all of her tapes and lock them up where only you have the key. Stop any purchases of new tapes.

There's one problem with that strategy. I want to stay married to her.

Update: The bad news is that last weekend, I just assembled yet another bookcase to hold her ever growing tape supply. The good news is that, now that she's admitted that she feels compelled to watch or tape even the Suggestions , she has agreed that it's a good idea to disable the Suggestions feature. I have done exactly that, and so now her TiVo will not provide anymore suggestions. I know that seems like a waste of TiVo's assets, but if my wife can't resist spending too much time with her TiVo due to beckoning suggestions, then I feel we've done the right thing here by disabling them.

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On the subject of selling it or keeping it for myself as my second TiVo, I'm undecided. I really don't have that many programming conflicts, so I probably really don't need two TiVos. But which to keep? Hers is subscribed; mine isn't. But mine has 194 hours of space, hers only 80. Also hers has folders, but mine doesn't (because mine's a series one).

I could sell hers, and then subscribe mine... that's a thought. But then I still wouldn't have folders, but folders aren't really that big a deal to me anyway. Or I could upgrade the series 2 to have more space and then sell my unsubscribed unit. (I wonder if a series 2 will upgrade to 194 hours worth?)

But then I have to figure out where to sell one. I guess I could try ebay, but I need to learn how to post an auction there. Plus my feedback score is only +7. (I've bought 8 things, all with positive feedback... two were from the same seller. I've never sold anything on ebay.) So I don't know how much bidding I'd get on my low feedback score.

I guess I could avoid the whole problem altogether and just keep both TiVos.

Edit: I forgot to mention that high on my priority list is to have more than just 80 hours of space. I really like recording everything at Best Quality.

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I could sell hers, and then subscribe mine... that's a thought. But then I still wouldn't have folders, but folders aren't really that big a deal to me anyway. Or I could upgrade the series 2 to have more space and then sell my unsubscribed unit. (I wonder if a series 2 will upgrade to 194 hours worth?)

if the OS is version 5x or higher it will support larger Hard drives. 7X definitley will.
You also could get a 120 hour drive from an upgrader already to go and add it as a second drive in the series 2 and still be below the 137 gig partition limit. Read up on their site about the power trip needed to keep a second drive from spinning up at the same time as the first adn pulling too much on the power supply.

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New question: If I put both TiVos together in the same room, is it okay for both to be plugged into the same phone line? Also, should I not plug them into the same UPS? I'm thinking that would cut down their ontime in half during a power failure. I already have two UPSes anyway, so I suspect that they each should continue having their own UPS even if they're in the same room. Any of you out ther have 2 TiVos in the same room? What do you do UPS-wise?

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New question: If I put both TiVos together in the same room, is it okay for both to be plugged into the same phone line? Also, should I not plug them into the same UPS? I'm thinking that would cut down their ontime in half during a power failure. I already have two UPSes anyway, so I suspect that they each should continue having their own UPS even if they're in the same room. Any of you out ther have 2 TiVos in the same room? What do you do UPS-wise?

Shouldn't be a problem - just split the phone line. If they HAPPEN to dial out at the same time, only one will succeed, the other will try shortly thereafter. Calls occur every 24-36 hours and last (average) 10-20 minutes. Odds of an overlap are low.

UPS - sure, you'd halve the total up-life, but so what - if you can't shut it down in 5 minutes, how does 10 minutes help?

Upgrades and disks (suggestion) - should you decide to sell the Series 1 with Lifetime (great market for it, BTW), move the large disk (from it) to the S2! Upgrades are easy. Use the income (from selling it) to buy Lifetime for the S2!

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I can't help but wonder if getting rid of her TiVo in some way is really going to do the trick? I ESPECIALLY wonder if it will if she knows you have a functioning TiVo in the house (let alone two!). What will keep her from using yours? What will keep the situation from escalating as it always has before?